The three of them looked dolefully from the PM report to Rushton’s computer files. It wasn’t a welcome possibility. Professional killers who operated for a third party were the hardest of all homicides to bring to book. Lambert said determinedly, ‘It’s early days yet.’
‘Saturday’s a busy day. I hope this won’t take too long.’
Jason Knight was on his own ground and feeling confident. He had taken the CID men into the tight, almost claustrophobic confines of his private den, behind the kitchens where he ruled supreme.
Lambert smiled the experienced smile of the man who knew his own world better than any outsider could, who had met and dealt with every attitude known to man in the course of nearly thirty years of detection work. He glanced round the bare cream walls of the little room, then said almost affably, ‘It will take as long as it needs, Mr Knight. This is a murder investigation.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.’
‘What sort of man was Mr Beaumont, in your view?’
Jason tried not to look shaken. He’d asked them to be brisk and not to waste time on the social niceties; they’d certainly taken him at his word. ‘He was a good employer. As long as he was satisfied that you were good at your job and knew what you were doing, he let you get on with it without much interference.’
‘And you’ve got on with it to good effect. I’m aware that your restaurant has an excellent reputation. Would you agree that it’s been a key factor in the successful growth of Abbey Vineyards?’
Jason, like most people of his calling, was never averse to words of praise. But he was also shrewd enough to wonder where this was going. He tried not to sound like his late employer in one of his publicity pamphlets as he said, ‘The restaurant is one factor, certainly. But it’s a team effort here. There are many other areas and many other people involved in the prosperous business which has been developed over the years. There are the people who plant and cultivate and harvest the vines, for a start. Without them, there would be nothing. The raison d’etre of this place and the centre of everything we do here is English wine.’
‘Yes. I seem to remember Mr Beaumont saying something very like that when he was alive. Would you now describe your relationship with him, please?’
Jason told himself not to react badly to this brusqueness. He couldn’t afford to get annoyed; the plain fact was that he was a suspect. He needed to deal with that. He tried to take his time, to ignore the long, quizzical face and the grey eyes, which seemed to be striving to peer into his very soul. ‘Martin was a good employer, as I said. He respected your skills and he paid you well for what you did.’
‘So you’d say your professional relationship was good?’
‘Yes. I’d go as far as very good.’
‘And your personal relationship?’
‘Good also. I liked Martin. He cut out most of the fripperies. He didn’t give himself airs and graces.’ Jason felt he was scraping the barrel here. He wanted the phrases to sound spontaneous and genuine, but they weren’t doing that. ‘Some of the other people have said to me that you always had to do things his way, but that didn’t apply to me. Martin made it clear that he knew very little about both cooking and the organization of work in a busy kitchen. He was happy to leave it all to me, the more so once he saw that I knew what I was doing and was achieving results.’
‘I see. So you didn’t feel in any way frustrated.’
Jason wondered what the others had said or were going to say. He realized for the first time that you couldn’t just prepare what you wanted to tell the police and deliver it. You wouldn’t get away with that, because they were going to compare it with what others said, about you as well as about Beaumont. As far as he knew, these top CID men hadn’t spoken to Gerry Davies yet, but they would do, and he wasn’t confident that honest Gerry wouldn’t let things out in spite of himself.
Jason would need to give them a little of what he had really felt. ‘I suppose everyone feels a little frustrated from time to time, when things don’t go exactly as planned. Martin was used to getting his own way. He was very successful, so that it was difficult to argue with him, even when you felt that you had a good idea to put forward.’
Lambert smiled at him, pleased to see him struggling. ‘You’ve just said that he didn’t interfere with you in your kitchens or the restaurant. You’d better make it clear exactly what you’re telling me now.’
‘Yes. Well, it’s difficult to be specific, but I think other people felt it as well as me. I’m about twenty years younger than Martin was, and I suppose I felt sometimes that he wasn’t always open to new ideas.’
‘You will need to be specific, however difficult you find that, Mr Knight.’
‘Well, I suppose I’m saying I’d have liked more of a say in policy matters. I think we all would — all the senior people, I mean.’
‘You wanted to be more than mere employees.’
‘Yes. I’m not sure how far other people shared this view, of course. You’d need to speak to them to find out that.’
‘Which we shall be doing, in due course. At the moment I’m trying to establish how much you resented Mr Beaumont’s autocratic way of running a business.’
‘Oh, our relationship was amiable enough. We’d agreed to differ, for the moment. I expect there’d have been ongoing discussions as time went on, if Martin hadn’t been removed from us.’
‘I see. You didn’t accept that Mr Beaumont’s attitude was immovable on issues affecting his control of the business? Mr Morton gave us the impression that there wasn’t room for manoeuvre on this sort of issue.’
Jason’s heart jumped at this. He hadn’t expected them to be so direct. It was forcing him to move off the ground he had been prepared to fight on. He forced a smile. ‘Alistair Morton and I have different temperaments, I think. Not that I feel I know him really well, even after years of working here. He’s very efficient about matters of finance, but something of an introvert. He isn’t an easy man to get to know. Perhaps Alistair accepted Martin’s decisions as final, whereas I tend to think that there is always the possibility of change. It was my view that as the business grew bigger and bigger, Martin would eventually have had to compromise a little, to allow other people a greater input on decisions of policy. Unfortunately, we’ll now never be able to see whether I was right or whether I was too optimistic. I must admit I always tend to look on the bright side of things.’
‘Perhaps someone else didn’t share your view. Perhaps that someone saw Beaumont’s death as the only way of changing things.’
‘I suppose that is a possibility. I must confess that I had assumed that Martin’s death was unconnected with the business. I’d presumed that it was likely to have stemmed from his private life.’
‘And what reason do you have for thinking that?’
‘None, I suppose. I just thought violent death must have come from violent emotion.’
‘It often does. Do you have a particular reason for thinking violent emotion prompted this crime?’
This Lambert man wasn’t letting him get away with anything. He had planned to offer them a bland, stonewalling performance and send them away feeling he had nothing to offer. But everything he suggested seemed to be treated as if he had special knowledge. He said carefully, ‘No, I’ve no real reason to think this was a killing prompted by private passion. I’ve no idea what motive Martin’s killer had. But when you know a man had a fairly turbulent personal life, you inevitably think his death might be connected with that.’
This time Lambert offered him a nod of agreement. ‘You’d better tell us about this turbulence in Mr Beaumont’s personal life, hadn’t you?’
‘I don’t know any details.’ Jason was immediately and instinctively defensive; he could hear it in his own voice. He knew he needed to offer them something. ‘I do know that Martin wasn’t particularly close to his wife. He produced her about once a year, usually on a formal occasion like dinner in the restaurant, but otherwise we never saw her. I’ve been told that she has some sort of mental illness, but I couldn’t give you any details of that.’